How To Convert Videos Using VLC Media Player

VLC media player is probably the best video player out there for Windows, or at least one of the best. VLC’s simple user interface, great number of features, support for almost all video formats, and high performance easily make it the best video player.

Most of Windows users use VLC for watching videos and aren’t aware of all advanced features that it offers.

For those who have been using VLC player to watch video files only, you can use VLC to convert video files from one format to another, stream video files, capture your desktop or capture the TV, and also watch online videos within the player without having to launch your web browser.

You might ask why one would use VLC when there are plenty of powerful free tools available to convert video files. Of course, a software specially designed to convert video files will have more options and supports more formats. But if you don’t want to install an additional software to convert a small video file or quickly want to convert video file to MP3, you can use the converter tool present in all recent versions of VLC.

Follow the instructions given below to convert a video file in Windows using VLC media player:

Step 1: Launch VLC media player.

Step 2: Click Media menu and then click Convert/Save option to launch Open Media dialog box. Alternatively, when the VLC is running, you can use Ctrl + R hotkey to launch Open Media dialog.

Step 3: Here, under File tab, click Add button to browse to the video file that you wish to convert. Browse to the video file, select it, and then click Open button.

Step 4: Next check the option titled Use a subtitle file if you would like to add a subtitle file to the selected video. You can skip this step if you don’t want to add subtitle.

Step 5: Next step is to check the option titled Show more options to see options to change start time of the video file (useful if you want to always start the selected video file at a certain timestamp), and MRL (Media Resource Locator).

Step 6: Finally, click Convert/Save button to select destination folder, and select the new format of the video file. Here, you can either select a readily available profile, edit an existing profile, or create a new profile by selecting a new video and audio codec.

Click the settings icon next to a file to choose the video codec, audio codec, bitrate, resolution, and frame rate. And if you want to create a new profile with custom settings, click on create new profile button (see picture) to see all options.

Step 7: Finally, click Start button to begin converting the video file. Depending on the size of the video file, selected format, and your PC hardware it the time might take a few minutes to hours to complete the process.

Once done, browse to the destination folder that you have mentioned in Step 6, right-click on the video file, click Open with, and then click VLC media player to start playing the video file. Good luck!